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THE BIRTH of SOCIOLOGY and SOCIAL INTERACTION Gennaro Iorio INTRODUCTION All Theoretical Thoughts and Scientific Endeavors, Even

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THE BIRTH of SOCIOLOGY and SOCIAL INTERACTION Gennaro Iorio INTRODUCTION All Theoretical Thoughts and Scientific Endeavors, Even THE BIRTH OF SOCIOLOGY AND SOCIAL INTERACTION∗ Gennaro Iorio∗∗ INTRODUCTION All theoretical thoughts and scientific endeavors, even in their most abstract forms, are not only the product of intellectual reflection, but also the expression of a given society, of a specific historical period. Since human beings live in society and all societies have a temporal dimension, cultural currents always have a precise historical and social context. In this brief outline, we have tried to highlight the fact that “social relationships” have been at the basis of sociological study ever since it was established as a science of human behaviour. At the same time, the concept of social relationships created a boundary which distinguished it from philosophy, law, psychology, biology, economics, history and politics, all of which had to do with the interpretation of social phenomena. We are therefore proposing as a subject for analysis, those theories and those authors who for the first time in the story of human thought have come to be defined as sociologists. The “discovery of society” presented by sociologists, coincides with the individualization of new practices and new social relationships in the emerging modern society: therefore at a theoretical level one “invents” the category of social relation. In making this cultural distinction, we used a method developed by that sector of sociology which looks at the development of knowledge. It considers the interdependence between theoretical models and the historical contexts in which they matured. Thus the concept of interdependence prevents us from giving a single cause explanation to the relationship between social structure and social phenomena. Having stated this sociological premise, I will begin to develop the theme on social interactions and their role in the birth of sociological reflection. In proposing the discovery of social interactions as a focal point of sociological thought, certainly we run the risk of structuring it excessively and oversimplifying it. This is due to lack of time to fully present this subject in all its facets. 1. ACKNOWLEDGING THE TIMING AND LOCATION OF SOCIOLOGY Sociology is perhaps the only science where we precisely know the year it was officially started: it was 1838 when in the 47th Course of positive philosophy Auguste Comte (1798-1857) coined the term Sociology (Comte, 1908, p. 132).1 The writings of Comte however had already constituted a point of reference for sociology in 1820. Since the first of these texts was written in collaboration with his teacher, Henry Saint-Simon (1760-1825), credit for the birth of this discipline must be given also to this writer. * The following is a list of the literature used as reference in preparing this paper: P. Baert, La teoria sociale contemporanea, Il Mulino, Bologna 2002; L.Coser, I maestri del pensiero sociologico, Il Mulino, Bologna 1983; F. Crespi, P. Jedlowskj, R. Rauty, La sociologia. Contesti storici e modelli culturali, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2001; S>G Therborn, Scienza, classi e società. Uno studio sui classici della sociologia e sul pensiero di Marx, Einaudi, Torino 1982; R.A.Wallace e A.Wolf, La teoria sociologica contemporanea, Il Mulino, Bologna 1994. ∗∗ Sociologist, researcher at the university of Salerno (Italy); instructor for on-line sociology course; member of the directive council of the Italian Association of Sociology. 2. Another pioneer was undoubtedly Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), a sociologist who lived in England during the Victorian era, during the mid-eighteen hundreds. Spencer had considerable influence on the history of social theory since the first sociologists in the United States often referred to his writings. The United States was in fact the region where sociology had its first strong foothold in the academic world. Another important element in sociology is its historical development, that is, the period in which it reached its own cultural maturity. This occurred in the years that the “founding fathers” of this discipline were publishing their works, that is, between 1880 and 1920: Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) in France; Georg Simmel (1858-1918), Ferdinand Tönnies (1855-1936) and Max Weber (1864-1929) in Germany; the Italian Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923) who taught at Lausanne; and the American “founders”, from Lester Ward (1841-1913) to Charles Cooley (1864-1929).2 Sociology began to be taught at university level in France and in the United States; in Germany it aroused interest in the academic world which led to the writing of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Soziologie.3 The latter part of the eighteen hundreds saw the birth of some important sociological reviews: the Revue Internationale de Sociologie (1893), the American Journal of Sociology (1895), the Rivista Italiana di Sociologia (1897), the Année Sociologique which Durkheim began to publish in 1898. In France the Institute International de Sociologie was founded, connected to their Revue, to which the most important sociologists of various nations belonged, with the exception of the followers of Durkheim. The birth of sociology is therefore a phenomenon that came about in the western hemisphere, particularly in Western Europe in the course of the nineteenth century and in the United States during the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries. I think it is important to underline the fact that the birth of this science is linked to a specific context, namely its Euro-Atlantic roots. A second element to remember in this brief geo-historical map is the fact that sociology is historically positioned in a post-revolutionary era. We already mentioned that in France sociology was introduced by Comte and Saint- Simon in the years of the Bourbon restoration. In England, the studies of Spencer took place not only after the revolution of 1688, but also after the parliamentary reform of 1832 and the abolishment of laws governing wheat production. In Germany, Italy and the United States, sociology was formalized long after the decisive events of the bourgeois revolution.4 It is unlikely, therefore, that the emergence of a new science of society and the social unrest can be attributed only to mere chance. Sociology moreover was not the first application of scientific methodology to societal life: political economics had already reached a state of maturity a century before its birth and, even earlier, Hobbes (1588- 1679) and Montesquieu (1689-1755) had already tried to analyze society with the methods of natural sciences.5 The precursors of sociologists had to deal with two types of already-existing reflections on society: political economics and political theory, or rather, philosophy. 1.1 The distinction from political economics G-Iorio Gennaro 3. Political economics did not arouse much interest in eighteenth century France; it occupied only marginal space in the writings of the first generation of sociologists. Comte and Saint-Simon were acquainted with and appreciated the work of Adam Smith (1723-1790). They were influenced by the French economist Jean-Baptiste Say who endeavoured to exalt the importance of industrial entrepreneurs with respect to agrarian capitalists, who were in turn defended by the physiocrats. This is why Saint-Simon attempted to relate political forms to real social forces. His objective was therefore to place power into the hands of industrialists.6 Comte, on the other hand was contrary to an economic vision of society. He acknowledged the role of political economics in drawing attention to the new class of industrialists, yet he remained hostile to the narrow vision of social organization from the point of view of free trade.7 Even Spencer, while defending the laws of political economics from its adversaries, did not attribute any special importance to it in “A System of Synthetic Philosophy.” He used concepts and arguments like the division of labour and trade developed by economists, but stated that his interest in this area came from physiology and that his point of reference was thus the science of biology.8 Hence the relationship between political economics and sociology does not seem to be a useful starting point to analyse the historical development of this new discipline. Its pioneers did not consider this new intellectual undertaking to be either a critique or a continuation of political economics. 1.2 The distinction from philosophy The relationship with political philosophy is different. The first sociologists spent a lot of energy to consider the development of a political science and of a political system that would correspond to the needs of the new world. Saint-Simon, as we have already seen, based his entire reflection on the elaboration of a new political science capable of developing a political system consistent with the needs of the new world, which he interpreted as the building of an industrial order. Comte sought to express a positive science of politics, illustrated in a systematic manner in his Plan des travaux scientifiques necessaries pour reorganizer la société. In fact, one of his most important works is entitled Système de politique positive. Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), his contemporary and author of De la démocratie en Amèrique, also arrived at a conclusion from his own studies that “a new political science is necessary for a world that is now completely new”.9 Spencer’s intellectual efforts were not aimed at defining the development of a new political system inasmuch as his reflection was an integral part of his philosophy of universal evolution. Certainly, political institutions were one of the main subjects of research because it was through these that the basic distinction was made between “military societies” and “industrial societies.” Political theory thus appears to be the intellectual background upon which we need to consider sociology’s quest to establish a new science of society, or rather, the context within which the first attempts were made to develop the scientific subject matter on politics in the wake of the upheaval of the French Revolution.
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